Phantom

13

It had rained all night, and from where Harry was standing, in front of Oslo District Prison, he could see a fresh layer of leaves lying like a wet yellow tarpaulin over the park. He had not slept much after he had gone straight from the airport to Rakel’s. Hans Christian had come, not protested too much and gone again. Afterwards Rakel and Harry drank tea and talked about Oleg. About how it had been before. About how it had been, but not about how it could have been. In the early hours Rakel had said Harry could sleep in Oleg’s room. Before Harry went to bed he had used Oleg’s computer to search for, and find, old articles about the police officer found dead beneath Alvsborg Bridge in Gothenburg. It confirmed what Cato had told him, and Harry also found a piece in the ever-sensationalist Goteborgstidningen leaking rumours about the dead man being a burner, which it defined as a person criminals used to destroy evidence against them. It was only two hours since Rakel had woken him with a steaming cup of coffee and a whisper. She had always done that, started the day with whispers, to him and Oleg, as if to soften the transition from dreams to reality.

Harry peered into the CCTV camera, heard the low buzz and pushed open the door. Then he entered quickly. Held the briefcase up in front of him for all to see and laid his ID card on the counter while turning his good cheek.

‘Hans Christian Simonsen…’ the prison officer mumbled without looking up, running her eye down the list in front of her. ‘There, yes. For Oleg Fauke.’

‘Correct,’ Harry said.

Another officer led him through the corridors and across the open gallery in the middle of the prison. The officer talked about how warm the autumn had been and rattled the huge bunch of keys whenever he opened a new door. They walked through the common room, and Harry saw a ping-pong table with two rackets and an open book on top, and a kitchenette, in which a wholemeal loaf and a bread knife had been left out along with spreads of various kinds. But no inmates.

They stopped by a white door and the officer unlocked it.

‘I thought cell doors were open at this time of day,’ Harry said.

‘The others are, but this prisoner’s doing a 171,’ the officer said. ‘He’s allowed out only one hour a day.’

‘Where are all the others then?’

‘God knows. Perhaps they’ve got the Hustler Channel on TV again.’

After the officer had let him in, Harry stood by the door until he heard the footsteps outside fading in the distance. The cell was the usual kind. Ten square metres. A bed, a cupboard, a desk and chair, bookshelves, a TV. Oleg sat at the desk and looked up in surprise.

‘You wanted to meet me,’ Harry said.

‘I thought I wasn’t allowed visitors,’ Oleg said.

‘This isn’t a visit. It’s a consultation with your defence counsel.’

‘Defence counsel?’

Harry nodded. And saw the light dawn in Oleg’s eyes. Smart boy.

‘How…?’

‘The type of murder you’re suspected of committing doesn’t qualify you for a high-security prison. It wasn’t so difficult.’ Harry opened the briefcase, took out the white Game Boy and passed it to Oleg. ‘Here you are. It’s for you.’

Oleg ran his fingers over the display. ‘Where did you find it?’

Harry thought he could see the suggestion of a smile on the boy’s serious face. ‘Vintage model with battery. I found it in Hong Kong. My plan was to crush you at Tetris the next time we met.’

‘Never!’ Oleg laughed. ‘Not at that, and not at underwater swimming.’

‘That time in Frogner Lido? Mm. I seem to recall I was a metre ahead of you-’

‘A metre behind more like! Mum was a witness.’

Harry sat still so as not to destroy anything, soaked up the happiness at seeing the pleasure in his face.

‘What did you want to talk to me about, Oleg?’

The clouds drew back over his face. He fidgeted with the Game Boy, turned it over and over as if looking for the start button.

‘Take all the time you need, Oleg, but it’s often easiest to start at the beginning.’

The boy raised his head and looked at Harry. ‘Can I trust you? No matter what?’

Harry was about to say something, but stopped. Just nodded.

‘You have to get something for me…’

It was like someone twisting a knife in Harry’s heart. He already knew how Oleg would continue.

‘They’ve only got boy and speed here, but I need violin. Can you help me, Harry?’

‘Was that why you asked me to come?’

‘You’re the only person who’s managed to get round the ban on visitors.’ Oleg stared at Harry with his solemn, dark eyes. A tiny twitch in the thin skin below one eye revealed the desperation.

‘You know I can’t, Oleg.’

‘Course you can!’ His voice sounded hard and metallic between the cell walls.

‘What about the people you sold for, can’t they supply you?’

‘Sold what?’

‘Don’t lie to me!’ Harry smacked his hand down on the briefcase lid. ‘I found an Arsenal shirt in your locker at Valle Hovin.’

‘Did you break in…?’

‘I found this as well.’ Harry slung the photograph of the family on the desk. ‘The girl in the picture, do you know where she is?’

‘Who…?’

‘Irene Hanssen. Your girlfriend.’

‘How…?’

‘You were seen together at the Watchtower. There’s a jumper smelling of wild flowers and a junkie kit for two in the locker. Sharing your stash is more intimate than sharing the marital bed, isn’t it. Plus your mother told me she saw you in town, looking like a happy idiot. My diagnosis: in love.’

Oleg’s Adam’s apple went up and down.

‘Well?’ Harry said.

‘I don’t know where she is! OK? She just disappeared. Perhaps her brother picked her up again. Perhaps she’s in rehab somewhere. Perhaps she caught a plane and buggered off from all this shit.’

‘Or perhaps the news is not so good,’ Harry said. ‘When did you last see her?’

‘I don’t remember.’

‘You remember to the hour.’

Oleg closed his eyes. ‘One hundred and twenty-two days ago. Long before the stuff with Gusto, so what’s this got to do with the case?’

‘It all slots together, Oleg. A murder is a white whale. A missing person is a white whale. If you’ve seen a white whale twice it’s the same whale. What can you tell me about Dubai?’

‘It’s the biggest town, but not the capital, of the United Arab Emir-’

‘Why are you protecting them, Oleg? What is it you can’t tell me?’

Oleg had found the start button on the Game Boy and flicked it to and fro. Then he flipped off the battery cover at the back, raised the lid of the metal bin beside the desk and dropped the batteries inside before passing the toy back to Harry.

‘Dead.’

Harry looked at the Game Boy and slipped it into his pocket.

‘If you can’t get me violin, I’ll shoot up the diluted shit they’ve got here. Heard of fentanyl and heroin?’

‘Fentanyl is a recipe for an OD, Oleg.’

‘Right. So you can tell Mum afterwards it was your fault.’

Harry didn’t answer. Oleg’s pathetic attempt to manipulate him didn’t make him angry, it made him want to embrace the boy and hold him tight. Harry didn’t need to see the tears in Oleg’s eyes to know the struggle that was taking place in his body and head, he could feel the gnawing hunger in the boy, it was physical. And then there is nothing else, no morality, no love, no consideration, just the eternally pounding thought of the rush, the high, peace. Harry had once in his life been on the verge of accepting a heroin shot, but a chance second of clear-sightedness had made him decline. Perhaps it was the certainty that heroin would do what alcohol still had not been able to do: kill him. Perhaps it was the girl who had told him how she had been hooked from the first shot because nothing, nothing she had experienced or imagined, could surpass the ecstasy of it. Perhaps it was his pal from Oppsal who had gone to rehab to have his tolerance set to zero, because he hoped that when he injected himself afterwards it would be something like the first sweet shot. And who said that when he saw his three-month-old son’s vaccination mark in his thigh, he began to cry because it had triggered such a strong craving for dope that he had been willing to sacrifice everything, to go straight from the clinic to Plata.

‘Let’s make a deal,’ Harry said, conscious of his own thick voice. ‘I’ll get you what you ask and you tell me all you know.’

‘Great!’ Oleg said, and Harry saw his pupils widen. He had read somewhere that with heavy heroin users parts of their brains could be activated even before the syringe was inserted, that they were already physically high while the melted powder was being pumped up a vein. And Harry also knew it was these parts of Oleg’s brain that were speaking now, that there was no other answer than ‘Great!’, whether it was a lie or the truth.

‘But I don’t want to buy it on the street,’ Harry said. ‘Have you got any violin in your stash?’

Oleg seemed to hesitate for a second. ‘You’ve been to my stash.’

Harry remembered again that it was not true that nothing was sacred to a heroin user. The stash was sacred.

‘Come on, Oleg. You don’t keep dope where other junkies have access. Where’s your other stash, your reserves?’

‘I’ve only got one.’

‘I’m not going to steal anything from you.’

‘I haven’t got another stash, I’m telling you!’

Harry could hear he was lying. But that was not so important; it only meant presumably he didn’t have any violin there.

‘I’ll be back tomorrow,’ Harry said, getting up, knocking on the door and waiting. But no one came. In the end he wrenched the handle. The door opened. Definitely not a high-security prison.

Harry walked back the way he had come. There was no one in the corridor, nor in the common room where Harry noticed the food was still out, but the bread knife had been tidied away. He continued to the door leading out of the unit and into the gallery and discovered to his surprise that it was open, too.

Only at reception did he find locked doors. He mentioned the fact to the prison officer behind the glass, and she raised an eyebrow and glanced at the monitors above her. ‘No one will get any further than here anyway.’

‘Apart from me, I hope.’

‘Eh?’

‘Nothing.’

Harry had walked almost a hundred metres through the park down towards Gronlandsleiret when it struck him. The empty rooms, the open doors, the bread knife. He froze. His heart accelerated so fast he felt nauseous. He heard a bird singing. The smell of grass. Then he turned and sprinted back to the prison. Felt his mouth go dry with fear and his heart pound adrenalin around his body.